“Three minutes,” the guard said.
“—I’ve got no reason to care,” I continued. “I know this. I’ve done everything I can think of, I’ve broken every rule there is to break, I’ve gone emotionally and ethically bankrupt, and look, just look at me. Finally, I’m as banged up on the outside as I am on the inside. This is a job, just a fucking job, and no job’s worth this. But.”
I looked at him, anguished. Could he possibly understand?
“But he’s my patient, Henry. Does that make sense, what that means to me? No matter what happens in the trial, no matter what happens to him once he leaves The Brink, I want to help him now. I need to. I… I can’t…”
“…let it go,” Henry finished. He gave a serene, bittersweet smile, and lifted his eyes skyward. “That’s why I’m here, Zach. Couldn’t let go. Will finally got his wish because I couldn’t let it go. It makes more sense than you’ll know.”
Goddamn it, I had so many questions about that day. About the twenty years that had come and gone. But there was no time.
Always running out of time.
“What’s left?” I said.
Henry leaned even closer to the glass. “The Dark Man is an entity of vengeance, son. That’s what it was built to be; it never learned to be this way. It is what it is. Absolute punishment, retribution that’s as compassionless as the sin that brought it here. But is the Dark Man your roadblock?”
“No. It’s Drake. His insistence.”
Henry nodded. “He wants the blood washed from his hands. Not for the crimes he’s accused of…”
I blinked.
“…but for the ones he’ll never be accused of,” I said. “Red Show.”
I finally understood—and my heart ached with the understanding.
“I should go,” I said. “But I’ll come back. If you’ll have me.”
For the first time in the twenty total minutes I’d spent with him, my uncle’s face brightened and beamed. He smiled.
It looked like his first smile in twenty years.
28
11:30 AM, the scuffed Eterna on my wrist said.
I strode through The Brink’s employee parking lot with newfound purpose, sucking in the crisp air, nodding at the gorgeous autumnal spectacle that was Primoris Maximus. And now my feet clomped up the limestone front steps of the hospital, my hands tugged open the two metal doors. I had steel in my veins, and an old friend riding shotgun in my head. I needed his brazen lawlessness, his steel, for the endgame.
I stopped in the doorway. Malcolm stood inside our sorry lobby, his mop in hand. He saw me and gasped. I shrugged—No time to explain—and glanced at the glimmering tiles. A yellow sign read, CAUTION: WET FLOOR.
“I owe you a bottle of Grey Goose, right?” I asked.
Malcolm nodded dumbly.
“What… what the hell happened to you, boy?”
“I owe you two bottles now,” I said, moving past him. My mud-spattered Vans left a trail of footprints across the freshly mopped floor.
“Sheeeeeit,” Malcolm said.
I passed the scratched window of the Administrator’s Office, heading toward the elevator. Lina Velasquez’s cat’s-eye glasses rose from her computer screen, and her eyes met mine. Her taut face went pale. She peeped a tiny scream.
I kept walking.
Behind me, I heard her slapping the glass, her rings clack-clack-clacking.
“Taylor!” she cried.
“It can wait,” I said.
“Taylor! Muy urgente!”
I turned the corner, not listening.
More gasps from coworkers as I passed the break room. I heard a coffee mug shatter on the floor.
The elevator doors were directly ahead now. I walked faster down the long corridor, reached them, jabbed the metal “down” button with my thumb. It gave a loud, satisfying thwack! against the panel.
Dr. Peterson’s voice called from behind me, his perfunctory staccato filling the hall. I’d never heard him raise his voice before. I’m not sure anyone here ever had.
“Zachary!”
The lift beyond the doors began to whine, heading to the attic. I turned around.
The elderly man stood at the corner of the hallway, fifty feet away, his round face glowing pink from the dash to catch up. His belly rose and fell. Peterson’s eyes were wide, worried and owlish behind his glasses.
At The Brink, zue give a hoot, I thought, and began to chuckle.
The noise died in my throat when another man turned the corner. He loomed behind Peterson like a Brooks Brothers grim reaper, an ill omen. The source of Peterson’s worry.
“Dad.”
Yes. There to personally oversee the transfer. Behind him stood an NYPD cop, undoubtedly the armed escort for said transfer. The officer’s walkie-talkie snarled incomprehensible dispatch fuzz-speak.
Across the tiled void, my father’s face was a grim amalgam of disgust, disappointment and determination. He and I were gunslingers again, like we were in the 67th Precinct parking lot, widescreen duelists. Peterson turned and began to say something to the cop.
“Young man,” Dad said. “It’s over.”
The whine behind me grew louder. Almost here.
“High Noon ain’t for another half-hour,” I said. “Pardner.”
My father growled and began his march down the hall. The elevator doors moaned open behind me and I stepped backward, not seeing the person inside the car as I entered, not really caring as I knocked that person aside, folders and papers swirling to the floor like parade confetti.
I punched the button for Level 5.
“YOU STOP, GODDAMNIT!” Dad said, running now. The policeman made to bolt, but Peterson’s roly-poly body jerked left, then right, trying to get out of the way, unintentionally blocking him. They looked like fevered, awkward new lovers, attempting a first kiss.
The voice behind me, in the cabin: “What the Christ?”
Dad, ahead: “STOP! IT’S OVER!”
The doors: Creeeeaaaaaaaaak.
Me, as they closed, as my father’s furious face was less than a foot away:
“Giddy-giddy.”
The metal box sighed and sank into The Brink.
“Taylor, what’s your malfunction?”
I spun around. Staring up at me was Dr. Nathan Xavier. His typically immaculately styled hair was now a tousled mess. His hands snatched at the papers that had tumbled from our impact. He saw my horror-show face and barked a horrified “yahh!”
“Hi there,” I said.
“Wha… What…”
I squatted low. My knees popped. Xavier flinched as if he’d been shot.
“Let me help you,” I said, and my dirty hands scraped for the papers, collecting them into a haphazard mess. I passed them over. Xavier’s bottom lip twitched and trembled, a pink caterpillar.
I propped my forearms on my knees.
“It’s good you’re here,” I said. The world around us creaked. “You and me should have a heart-to-heart. See, I’m tired. Tired of the games. You wanna gun for me? You want my patients? You want notches in your belt, the spotlight, the media leaving messages on your voice mail. Right?”
Xavier shook his head, aghast.
“Nnn—”
“Sure you do,” I said. I hunkered lower, leaning in. “You’re hungry, ambitious. You’re stuck in this shithole with the rest of us, and you want out, wanna move up, cruise around in your Corvette, live in your Dream House. I dig it. I’m not wired for it, but I dig it. But you listen to me, Doctor Xavier. If you’re gonna screw me over, be a man about it. Tell me. Or go through proper channels. Hell, have the stones to suggest a collaboration; it might be interesting. But don’t slither and scheme and think that I’m not gonna find out about it. And don’t think that I won’t get pissed off about it.”